Joyce's buns come to sticky end

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As Dublin marches relentlessly into the 21st century,
Kieran Cooke bids farewell to a literary landmark.

Her name was Attracta. She had eyes like mountain lakes and a
faint smell of freshly gathered hay about her. On that long ago wet
Thursday afternoon we sat among the coloured tiles and bustle of
tea trays in Bewley's cafe in Dublin. I can't recall the
conversation, only the memory of scooping thickly creamed iced
coffee out of elegant long stemmed glasses, every spoonful a
glorious indulgence.

Now Bewley's - once described by the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly
as "the heart and hearth of Dublin" - has closed, another victim of
rising rents and changing tastes in the Irish capital. Goodbye to
romantic memories of sitting in front of the fire and gazing
dreamily out into an eiderdown of fog. Goodbye to the ghost of
James Joyce, licking his fingers over sticky buns and drinking the
only cup of coffee in the country that didn't taste like heated-up
bog water.

Farewell also to Brendan Behan, lurching in for a late afternoon
breakfast before returning to the alcoholic fray in McDaid's round
the corner or Davy Byrnes across the street.

Many Dubliners are angry at the passing of what they see as a
key part of their city's literary heritage. I'm not so sure.

Though Bewley's officially shut its doors at the beginning of
the month, it had, in fact, died some time ago when the branding
experts and the tourist market managers transformed it from a cafe
to a literary shrine. Suddenly you couldn't have a quiet tryst in
the corner without being bothered by a crowd of camera-toting,
Nike-wearing, backpack-strapping ladies and gents from Milwaukee.
Crowds of Japanese would commandeer all the sticky buns.

This literary tourism business is unsettling and potentially bad
for your health. In recent years I've been assaulted by a drunk
Norwegian in the Hemingway bar in Havana, suffered a sleepless,
mosquito-filled night in a Noel Coward suite in Bangkok and been
poisoned by a suspicious shrimp at a Somerset Maugham restaurant in
Hong Kong.

Dublin's highly energetic tourism officials have milked the
city's rich literary heritage for all it's worth - and good luck to
them. The literary tour guides who take the crowds in the steps of
Behan ("I'm a drinker with a writing problem") and Sean O'Casey ("I
was born at a very young age") do a fine job filling their charges
with amusing anecdotes and pints of porter.

But there's a price to pay: as the tourist numbers grow,
standards decline. If the likes of Behan, O'Casey and Patrick
Kavanagh were alive today they'd be hard put to find any bar fit
for their alcoholic and literary indulgences amid the "super pubs"
and wine bars of modern Dublin - and they'd be appalled at how
their names are used and abused around the city.

I was in an old Behan haunt not long ago, a bar that the great
man had been thrown out of on several occasions. Tourists milled
around reverentially, like ardent Catholics stepping into St
Peter's for the first time, looking for enlightenment, trying
desperately to soak up the atmosphere.

Blinded by the flashbulbs ("Dolores, that's probably the very
chair he sat on"), I knocked over a table. There was the sharp tang
of toilet cleaner in the air. The pint was outrageously expensive
and arrived far too quickly, like a mean priest with its tiny dog
collar of cream.

About the only touch of authenticity in the place was a portrait
of the writer, scowling down from a far corner. Behan would have
had a few choice things to say to the assembled crowd.

The rot set in at Bewley's when it opened its James Joyce room.
Suddenly the place was on the tourist map. Out went the waitresses,
in came self-service. The rather frightening but kind-hearted lady
who ran the place like a scout mistress disappeared. A general
sloppiness crept in: what had been bohemian gentility was replaced
by the atmosphere and dubious tastes of a motorway cafe. The sticky
buns lost their allure.

One of the joys of walking through central Dublin on a sharp
winter's morning was catching the aroma of freshly ground coffee
drifting up Grafton Street. One day the elderly man who stood in
the window of Bewley's behind his ancient coffee grinder was no
more.

Bewley's was founded by a wealthy family of Quakers. Those who
had fallen on hard times were often discreetly given a bowl of soup
or cup of tea, gratis. Once, slightly dishevelled after a day at
the races and a night on the town, I had the embarrassing
experience of a waitress refusing payment for my rashers, ever so
gently guiding my proffered coins back into my pocket.

How, I wonder, would Joyce have felt about the demise of
Bewley's?

Mick, the narrator in Flann O'Brien's The Dalkey
Archive, is told by the mysterious De Selby that Joyce is
alive and well, working incognito as a barman in Skerries, a
seaside town north of Dublin. Mick finally tracks Joyce down,
wiping the counter in a dimly lit bar. "He was oldish, thin,
slightly stooped, and he wore glasses. Thick grey hair was brushed
back from the forehead. Mick's heart began to thunder. Sweet God,
had he found James Joyce?"

Joyce is not quite the man Mick had expected to meet. The writer
is penning tracts for The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland and
planning to join the Jesuits. Joyce is appalled when told that
Ulysses - "pornography and filth and literary vomit,
enough to make even a blackguard of a Dublin cabman blush" - has
been published.

Likewise, Joyce might also have been scandalised to be
associated with the sadly declining world of Bewley's.

The cafe's owners have said a decline in customers and
outrageous rental demands forced the establishment to close.
There's talk of Bewley's being replaced by a cappuccino palace or
an expensive knicker emporium.

And Attracta? I never saw her again. The last I heard, she was
breeding thoroughbreds in County Leitrim. Perhaps, occasionally,
she feeds them sticky buns.